Edgaged

Kindergarten in a 1:1 environment is an interesting thing. Especially at the beginning of the year when students don't know all their letters yet. For the last several days, I've been working with Mrs. Kuehnert's kindergarten class. We've been focusing on just the basics when using the iPad. These basics will provide the scaffolding the students need in order to better utilize the iPad as a learning tool in the future. The more exposure they have to troubleshooting and basic use of the iPad, the more the device can be used throughout the rest of the year.     Last year, I created a list of skills to get Kindergarten rolling for the beginning of the year. I will more than likely add to this list, but this gives an idea of where to start with them so that Kindergarten students can feel confident in their use of the iPad. The key is to break it down and go slow. It will pay off in the long run when you have a bigger project later in the year. Feel free to view t...

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a group of fifth graders to discuss the use of their new Lenovo Windows 8.1 PC. They are very excited about the possibilities as well as the touch enabled screen that other grades do not get to experience quite yet. We discussed the need for updates as well as the dangers of downloading. When discussing these issues with fifth and sixth graders, I love comparing downloading as the same idea as accepting "snacks" from someone. (I can't take credit for the idea as it came from Google .) Students understand that it is important that they know where their "snacks" are coming from because it may contain something undesirable. We even discuss that sometimes "snacks" coming from safe sources (Java and Adobe) often times have extras in them that you do not want to download. So they need to be watchful with all downloads to make sure nothing else is being downloaded onto their machine. Lastly, we discuss that the...

Photo from: edtechnologyideas    There are quite a few virtual clicker systems out there. I have talked about Socrative and Infuse Learning  before and find both resources to be very useful for collecting data, assessing, and student engagement. Kahoot is a unique experience as it really beings out the competitive spirit as it totals points based upon speed and accuracy. It even announces who is in the lead after each question. It reminds me of being in college and playing the trivia games that were available at Buffalo Wild Wings. Each person had their own response system and users answered sports trivia while waiting for your food. You can create and access a teacher account at www.getkahoot.com . There you have the ability to create your own Kahoot! game or you can search their archives for others that are made by other teachers. Students will have to access through www.kahoot.it . Thus far, this post hasn't matched the title at all. I actually am posting th...

To add to my collection of Outlook 2013 tutorials, I decided to go a little more in detail with rules that you can create to better organize your email. I will warn you that it can get overwhelming as there are a lot of options to look at while setting up more advanced rules. However, becoming more familiar with rules will ultimately save you time as you can better organize your inbox. In this example, I create a rule based upon the sender and subject line combined. Based upon those conditions, it will create a copy of the email, put it into a specified folder, add it to my task list, and play a sound to alert me that it has arrived. Please notice that I said that it would make a copy of the email and put it in the folder. That means it will not be removed from your inbox. This is significant as many teachers utilize mobile devices. One of our biggest problems with utilizing rules to move specific messages to another folder is that users on mobile devices have to consciously find the...

Teachers are short on time. It is difficult to keep up with writing a newsletter. It is hard to keep up with the upkeep of a website. (Hence the reason we have moved East Noble elementary teachers to Blogger...it is easy!) Thanks to www.printfriendly.com , you can save tons of time by posting everything on your Blogger site and making a PDF copy of it without using tons of ink making color copies. Before I get into using the tool, here is a list of tips I would consider when preparing your Blogger site for Printfriendly: TIPS 1. Add a Heading above your text. Print friend does not seem to recognize your titles. So you may have to add an extra heading above each post. Here is how you change text to a heading: 2. Treat each post as newsletter information. So things like including links into your post. The readers need to be able to see the entire address in order to utilize it. For example: www.biguniverse.com  3. Clean up your post by deleting excess. I had a teacher...

There are so many "ins and outs" to Outlook 2013 to increase productivity. The average person may not even know that these tools exist to help them better organize their work routine. In this post, I'll talk about the benefits of utilizing tasks as well as quick steps. These tools will help avoid the dreaded overflow of email in you inbox. Follow-Up Flags/Tasks Ever notice in Outlook when you hover over an email in your inbox that a little flag appeared? Maybe you are already using it, but did you know you could flag according to time span of when you want to follow-up on the item? You can even create a reminder on a specific day so that you do not forget to get started on the task. Using the flags will help you keep track of the tasks you need to accomplish. Quick Steps Want to clear out your inbox a little? There are quite a few different "quick steps." I encourage you to experiment with them a little. However, I will be focusing specifically on...

If you as a school district have adopted Office 365 in Education, then this post is for you. As students received their laptops with Windows 8.1 for the first time today, we realized a couple things: The students did not have a OneDrive for Business sync on their computer, and they needed an overview of the many ways to save their files. (Please keep in mind that this post directly to relates to teachers and students within East Noble School Corporation. The methods by which your school district would like for you to save may differ.) The OneDrive for Business sync is a must. Initially I had attempted to just log into it as it is part of Windows 8.1, but the students couldn't log into it. After speaking with a member of the tech department, we came to the conclusion that it needed to be downloaded. This requires quite a bit of time, but it is absolutely necessary if you desire for students to be able to access their files very quickly. In the long run, the sync will save time. ...